Ernest Draper

Ernest Mercier is an industrialist French, director of the French Company of oil (CFP), ancestor of the oil group French Total. It was born in 1878 with Constantine (Algérie, then Frenchwoman), and is deceased in 1955.

Youths and war of 1914

His/her grandfather Stanislas Draper, a Protestant republican originating in Doubs leaves the metropolis to be established in Algeria. His/her father Ernest Draper senior (1840-1907), radical mayor of Constantine, will have five children of which Ernest Mercier junior, the third of the phratry. This last, after studies with Polytechnic, chooses to make career in the navy. It is sent to the port of Toulon, whose it modernizes the installations, in particular the electrical communication. To improve, it follows between 1905 and 1908, the courses of the University of Electricity (Supélec). It is at that time that he marries Madeleine Tassin (1881-1924) the girl of a Republican senator. He is then noticed by Albert Petsche and leaves the administration for the electric private sector.

During the First World War, affected in the navy, it fights in Balkans and Dardanelles. For Kuisel (1967, p.5) it is somebody who with the “spirit of the face”. Wounded whereas it orders on the Danube of the Rumanian troops, it is repatriated on Paris where he becomes the liaison officer of Louis Loucheur, Minister for the armament of George Clemenceau, with the generals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Pétain like with the American troops. After war, for the Anglo-American ones, he will remain colonel Mercier. When Louis Loucheur is named Minister for the released zones, Mercier follows it and deals with the German factories depending on the military Audit Board.

The industrialist of electricity and oil

The two great sectors where it will be active, electricity and oil, are at the same time then newest, and those which in the Twenties will draw the French economy.

In 1919, he plays a key part in the foundation of the Union of electricity which links various small firms of the Paris region. In the inter-war period, he will be an important actor of the field of electrical energy in France, through the Group of Messine, building hydro-electric thermo plants and stoppings.

In 1923, it is charged by Raymond Poincaré on the suggestion with Louis Pineau, its adviser with the oil businesses and of Louis Loucheur, Minister for the rebuilding to instigate and restructure the oil sector by building a company of a sufficient size to be the operator of reference which the country needed. Indeed, the war and the development of mechanical transport showed at the same time the strategic importance of this sector and the weakness of France in this field. The French Company of oils (CFP) is founded in March 1924. A law voted in 1931 will give 35% of its capital, then entirely deprived, in the State, but Mercier will be satisfied to have succeeded in avoiding a law giving to this last a total control on the company. Starting from its first credit, 25% of the shares of Turkish Petroleum Company, the CFP develop thanks to the oil exploitation close to Kirkuk in Iraq, then in Colombia and with the Venezuela. The CFP had also interests in Romania ( Steaua Roumania ). Draper reinforces the vertical integration of his group by building tanker means of transport and Raffinerie S with Gonfreville, close to the Havre and on the pond of Berre, close to Martigues.

The committed industrialist

In December 1925, it founds the French Redressement, a movement sponsored by the Maréchal Foch intended “to gather the elite and to educate the masses”. This movement had two broad objectives: to make adopt by France what we call a mode of regulation fordist (strong productivity, high wages and consumption of mass) and modernize the institutions and the political life. If its economic ideas as political were destined for a great future, in the inter-war period, it succeeds in convincing neither the other owners (too much Malthusians) nor politicians. It should be said that its élitiste vision of technocracy, resulting from its formation to polytechnic and the influence of the Maréchal Lyautey had aspects which could and can still cause reserves even if it became now dominant. The little of success of its company, its setting causes some in the events of February 6th, 1934, which it described like the victory of the “spirit of the face”, the failure of the government of national union of Gaston Doumergue (November 1934)) it waited much, were certainly elements which led it to dissolve, in 1935, the French Rectification. It then ceases being the spokesperson of the polytechnicians modernisateurs this role passing, in a certain manner, with Louis Marlio and Auguste Detœuf around the review Nouveaux Books .

It continues to be active in the field of the foreign politics. With died of Louis Squinter, in 1931, it takes the head of the French committee Pan-européen. In 1932, a committee of experts meets under the auspices of the French Rectification and recommends an alliance with England to make pressure on German. In 1934, he recommends a bringing together with the USSR so as to encircle Germany. It is accordingly, seems it, which it gave a conference on Russia in 1936 to the Center polytechnician of economic studies which continued the work of the Groupe X-Crisis. If, in 1938, it still takes part in the Colloque Walter Lippmann, it there has, seems it, no active role, and perhaps it was especially attracted because the problems were tackled there from a point of view which exceeded the French framework.

The second world war and afterwards

In May 1940, the American ambassador in Paris asks him to organize the distribution of the assistance offered by the American Red Cross. Even if the mode of Vichy counts former members of the French rectification like Raphaël Alibert (minister of justice) or Hubert Lagardelle, Ernest Mercier does not collaborate. He thought that it is partly by revenge that Yves Bouthillier, old of the French rectification then Minister for Finance, had creates a legislation limiting the number of posts of administrator that a person could occupy (Kuisel, 1967, p.148) who forced it to leave the CFP. Having married in second weddings in 1927, Marguerite Dreyfus the niece of Alfred Dreyfus, it was also the object of attacks anti-semites. He escaped the deportation only because the day when he was to be stopped, he was hospitalized victim D `a poisoning of blood. He formed part thereafter of the same resistance network as Auguste Perret the architect and than André Siegfried.

In November 1944, it takes part in the conference of Rye a conference of international businessmen intends to make “a preliminary study of the economic bases of peace”. In 1946, when the companies of electricity which it directed are nationalized to form EDF, its career of manager of undertaking ends. It will continue to chair the French branch of the international Chamber of commerce and will sit at the board of directors of certain companies while Mercier the engineer will continue research on the electric turbines.

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